The Portrait People
by bluepotion
Summary: Harry is worried that his youngest son seems strangely preoccupied with the Dark Arts. And when Albus discovers one of Hogwarts' most fundamental secrets, it seems that his fears are justified. Inspired by Harry Potter and the Cursed Child.
1. Chapter 1

**The Unicorn Tapestry **

Albus Severus Potter knew it was disturbing, but he could not stop looking at it. And it was not just because the jabbing spears and thrashing legs were the only movements in his cold, still bedroom. It was not merely the vitriol in the men's faces, either, or the terror which burned in the white glint of the creature's eye, which was matched only in brightness by the carefully inked white edges of the metal spears. The parchment seemed to flash with life in his dark bedroom as the creatures struggled on its surface. He did not look up from it as he shut his wardrobe door, hard, and threw the pile of red jumpers back onto his bed with one hand. So it was only when he reached the creaky floor board halfway across the room that he was reminded of the sound he had not heard, and he froze. He had not heard the door slam shut.

He knew what he would see before he turned around. A pale hand stretched out, preventing the door from closing. It was holding a tangled mass of red wool, and Albus took in the empty bed where his jumpers had been. He forced himself to walk back across the floor, glancing at his bedroom door, which was ajar. In silence he took a handful of the wool and pulled, but the hand pulled back. Putting the moving drawing down onto his desk he picked up instead _Medieval Wizarding Practices_, and swatted at the pale hand, weakly, both because he did not want to make a noise and because he could not find the strength within him underneath his revulsion. Growing desperate, he slammed the door into it so that it dropped the wool, but still it stretched out, unrelenting. The red threads slithered over his shoes and in the open trunk at his feet, and he bent down and picked up as many identical packets of jelly slugs as he could from inside.

He knew he must not touch its skin, so he dropped them into its hand, and another hand stretched out to catch them. Then they both retreated inside, and Albus quickly turned the key, removed it from the lock and placed it in his pocket- what he should have done the first time. It was one of only two lockable cabinets in his house. He picked up the drawing again, trying to convince himself that he was safe now that it was locked in. He heard a rustling from the crack at the bottom of the wardrobe and jumped back from it. Shreds of what had once been the jelly slug packets excreted out onto his floor, and he left the room as quickly as he could.

He peered into James's darkened bedroom across the landing, just in time to see his brother launch himself backwards out of his window. James winked at him as he fell from view, into the cold, dark night, and Albus tiptoed on down the two flights of stairs. Settling onto the top step on the landing, he cradled the drawing on his lap, his sharp elbows encircling it protectively. He leant forwards, trying to forget the thing he had to keep hidden in his wardrobe. His father's voice bled up the stairs from the drawing room,

'…think "unusual magic" is an understatement. Hermione looked it up and said she couldn't find anything on drawings moving with no enchantments. Nothing. Obviously I didn't tell her_ what_ Albus had drawn…'

The words snaked towards Albus from the depths of the crimson sofa cushions that his father was undoubtedly sunk into, like the thrashing unicorn in his picture, which was half sunk down into the surrounding bushes. Although, unlike his father, it was far from relaxed, having been brought down by the hunting dogs which swarmed over it, tearing at its back. Harry by contrast sounded perfectly at ease, likely stroking the warm ginger cat which frequented his lap; oblivious to his eavesdropping son hovering above him.

'Harry, really.' There was a faint rustle of Ginny turning the page of a newspaper. 'It's a tapestry hanging in Hogwarts; it isn't as if he's specifically hunted down Dark Illustrations in the restricted section. Oh look, apparently Gwenog Jones has taken up acromantula breeding- she kept that quiet.'

'Bit of an unusual hobby, yeah- but it's not just the drawing, though, it's the magic. He didn't just draw it, he made it come _alive_, Ginny. A _Dark image_. What can that mean? Magic always means something.'

'I don't think it's the parchment, if that's what you're implying. Cursed parchment seems a bit of a stretch- it's not actually done anything to him. Unless you're implying that there is something wrong with Albus?'

On the stairs, Albus gripped the drawing tightly, the dogs writhing and snapping their jaws under his thumb. This was not a conversation he was supposed to hear.

'No, no- of course not. The magic, it- it could mean anything. Maybe - I don't know- the light hit the parchment at exactly the time when the original tapestry was made. Or he used the same ink that's in the fabric? Maybe his quill has some sort of special connection with it, like with wands?' He trailed off into thoughtful silence.

Ginny laughed. 'Or_ maybe_ he drew it just after the feast, after eating a fish that was caught by the exact same spear as the one in the picture?'

Harry sighed. 'Ho, ho.' There was a pause. The unicorn's shimmering horn stabbed wildly at its attackers. It was unwieldy- almost as long as the encircling spears; almost, but not quite. Harry continued, 'And, you're going to think this is stupid, but- this whole thing reminds me of something Sirius said, when I was a teenager, when we were talking about Snape. That my dad picked on him because he was 'this little oddball who was up to his eyes in the Dark Arts'. I don't want the other students to think that of Al. Why is he drawing unicorns being slain anyway, why isn't he busy exploring the castle, making friends? That's what I spent my first term doing...well, aside from all the other stuff…'

'Harry. Would you honestly rather he was battling trolls and three-headed dogs?' he heard his mother say. She lowered her voice, so that Albus leant forwards to hear her better. 'And at least he is doing magic, of some kind. Given how worried we were, beforehand, we should be glad of that. Apparently, she's cross breeding them with pixies, Gwenog- the spiders, that it, not three-headed dogs. I'm not sure which is worse, though, come to think of it. Probably best not to. I wonder if she's going to teach them to play Quidditch? Ah yes, here we are, a double page spread diagramming their special adaptations for it. So many legs, so little time.' She obviously looked up from her newspaper, because when she went on her voice sounded much more direct. 'You said so yourself that Snape was a good man. For Merlin's sake, you named Albus after him!'

His father snorted. 'Yeah, because of what he did in the end, Gin, because of what he chose. Not because of the person he was before he became a spy for Dumbledore. I'll always be grateful to him; I owe him everything. But I obviously don't want the sort of school life he had for Al, moping around, obsessing over Dark Magic. I want the sort of life that Snape worked most of his life to defend, a life free from all that. Life will pass him by if he just sits broodingly in the corridors drawing unicorns dying.'

His mother laughed, exasperated. 'If nothing happens to Albus the entire time he's at Hogwarts, I'll eat Dobby's old sock collection. And you're one to talk; you, Hermione and Ron were always investigating Dark Magic at school, right from your first year. I know, I know, Albus doesn't need to, no-one's trying to do him in the way they were you, thank Dumbledore. Thank Snape, even! But it's just a drawing, Harry. Quite a good drawing, too, by the sounds of it. Better looking than these acromantula-pixie diagrams, anyway, they look like the drawings of his nightmares Ron used to do for Mum when he was six.'

A movement caught Albus's eye, and he saw his brother James on the other side of the tall black window, hanging from his vertical broom as though abseiling, releasing it so that it dropped and then squeezing hold of it again and taking another step down the windowpane. He winked at Albus as he jolted past, faintly illuminated by the orange-red glow of distant cars and streetlamps.

Suddenly, he mistimed a step, and Albus felt his breath catch. His brother made panicked eye contact with him, clutching the rapidly sinking broom, which was unresponsive to his grip at a clearly incorrect diagonal angle, whilst scrambling for a foothold on the smooth, cold glass. The split second before James managed to get the broom into the right position again seemed to rush at Albus with the force of a brick wall, and he half rose from the step where he was perched. James, however, merely smiled at him with nervous relief and started climbing back up the window, towards the rooftops. Albus wondered if he would even be able to make him out in the darkness if he were to plummet past to his death.

Distracted by James, he barely heard his father's low, grumpy rumble of a reply, '…expect a professional quality from the Quibbler, Ginny. And it might be just a drawing, but it's still a drawing of an evil, dark act. He doesn't need to think about that sort of thing. Slaying unicorns. That's dark magic that Voldemort did, Gin…'

At that, Albus leapt up and stormed back up the stairs to his room, his temper flaring too much for him to even keep his steps quiet. He could hardly believe his own father would compare him to Voldemort, but the whole conversation had been leading up to it. Albus always had the sense that there was something, despite his dad's reassuring front, some disapproval of him underneath the surface. Why did he have to go and over-analyze everything to his mum? And this Severus Snape- whenever his father told him about his namesake, he made him out to be a hero, but Albus had begun to suspect a long time ago that this was not his true opinion. Whenever Albus overheard his father, and the adults talking amongst themselves, he heard things just like this, about how Severus Snape was dark and creepy and cruel.

Albus slammed the drawing onto his bed, fearing seconds too late that he might have creased or torn it. His breath caught as he slowly removed his hand and inspected it. It was completely unscathed. He sat down by his open trunk, looking at the violent frenzy of men attacking the unicorn, and his anger dissipated in the aftermath of his fear at how he might have damaged it. He touched the unicorn's horn.

'Sorry,' he whispered. He wished he could just be the sort of person who could not care about his dad's expectations of him, or about James's determination to outdo death with his ridiculous broomstick tricks. He thought about the thing in his wardrobe. Maybe he should just open it up, and let the creature shred his old self the way it had his old jumpers. He shivered in the draft from James's open window.

'James!' called his mother from downstairs. 'James, stop that thumping and either help your brother unpack or come down here.'

'Be there in a bit, Mother!' Albus heard James call from somewhere outside, his voice made eerie by its faintness, more like the echo of past children than his present-day wild brother.

He shut his eyes and tried to calm himself, willing the tension to leave him. No one knew how he felt. They thought the angry stomping and his slammed bedroom door was just James galumphing around as usual. He didn't need to address his dad's concerns. Albus was pretty sure he would never say those things to his face.

'Woah. New décor. Very…. swamp like?' James called from his doorway. Albus stowed his drawing behind him with a start. His brother was peering around at the bedroom, which their dad had charmed into green hues to show his support for Albus's new house at Hogwarts. He seemed to remember Albus had just seen him doing his forbidden, highly dangerous nighttime flying, and he added a placating, 'Sort of, refreshing, I guess… it makes a nice change? Coming down?' He sniffed and pulled a stray dead leaf out of his tangled hair. 'Must be dizzying at these heights, now that you're used to sleeping in a dungeon,' he added, unable to resist the final jibe as he passed.

Albus grit his teeth and followed James, who seemed to be trying to take his flying antics one step further by taking off without any sort of broom at all, judging by the speed with which he flew down the staircase and the number of steps he skipped all together. Predictably, he ran slap bang into their mother at the bottom, who was not best pleased.

'James! How many times do I have to tell you? No. Running. In. Side. Have you no regard for your own safety? Don't answer that. And why are you so cold?' she berated.

'Magical children magically heal,' retorted James. This was one of his favourite comebacks. 'And when they don't, well, why don't they just relocate St Mungo's department of Magical Accidents and Catastrophes here? I hear Dad's got some sway with the Ministry. Sure he could swing it for us.'

'He's got a point, Gin,' his dad yelled from the drawing room, yawning. 'Merlin knows it would save us all the trips.'

'I despair, I really do. Get yourself in the drawing room and warm up,' said his mother, despairingly, but with the air of one completely at home in such chaos, as James barreled into the drawing room.

'Lily in here?' James shouted, bouncing off the door frame. Ginny was busy untangling some white bicorn horns that were spellotaped to the ceiling for a reason Albus could not fathom, and which James had disturbed, so she didn't notice as Albus descended the shadowy stairs.

He stepped slowly down, prolonging the time until his Dad could interrogate him about the unicorn drawing. He found the still, muggle-style portraits of the old House Elves eerie, even though they had replaced the arguably creepier mounted heads which had adorned the stairs under its ownership by a Slytherin family. He felt a creeping sense of guilt, as though his being sorted into Slytherin was a kind of regression. Their painted stillness, meant to be symbolic of more humane times, in which house elves were no longer slaughtered, and muggle portraiture could be tolerated in a wizarding home, disturbed him. Portraits were supposed to move. He ran his fingers along the bottom of their golden frames as he walked, making trails in the dust, and sure he could see their ears flap and pillow-cases ripple in the half-light. He told himself that this was an illusion, but he was unable to prevent the thought that it might not be, that it might be his unconscious magic. He hurried towards his mother.

'Albus,' she greeted warmly as she spotted him, still fiddling with the bicorn horns, which Albus realized had been spellotaped together in the shape of snowflakes. 'Finished unpacking already?' She stretched out her arms and hugged him when he had plodded his way to the foot of the stairs. 'Had a good term? You're quite cold, too; honestly, this old house! Anyway, come and tell us all about it by the fire.'

Albus squeezed past the sharp bicorn horns, narrowly avoiding being poked in the eye, into the drawing room, where he was immediately besieged by Lily. She obscured his vision completely, but for a frame of green flames which writhed and hissed unnaturally in the grate behind her. The flames were not normally green, and Albus glanced at his dad, who was sitting on the sofa, buckled in by the large ginger cat stretched across his lap. Was everything to be green now because of him?

'Tell me! Tell me about Hogwarts,' Lily begged, tugging at the sleeve of his travelling cloak. 'Tell me Al, please. What potions did you brew? Were there shelves upon shelves of ingredients? Did you make any magical accidents?'

His mum sighed, coming in behind him and sitting beside his dad, facing the long, deep red velvet curtains blocking out the stillness of the freezing night which had crept into the upper floors. 'Honestly, it's almost as though the children in this family are aiming for magical accidents,' she declared. 'You children do know that the point of learning magic is to learn how to do it deliberately, so that there are no magical accidents, don't you? Because I do wonder.'

Lily rolled her eyes, and looked hopefully up at her older brother, the green firelight catching on ends of spellotape she had stuck to her cloak and then forgotten about.

'Well… Not really, Lil,' he lied, sinking into an armchair in front of the curtains, hoping his parents wouldn't bring up his drawing of the unicorn being stabbed in front of her. Lily settled on one of the chair's arms, and their Aunt's cat, Crookshanks, leapt from Harry's lap to hers in a dazzling act of acrobatics quite unexpected in one so fat, which James would have found inspirational had he been paying attention.

Instead, he snorted from across the room, where he was reclining leisurely on the burgundy chaise longue. In his right hand he casually swilled a glass of Rosmerta's finest mulled mead, which they ordered every Christmas.

'That's not what I heard,' he said, in a sing song voice that made Albus think inexplicably of how sharp the unicorn's horn was, and the bicorn horns just outside.

'No underage drinking, James,' said their mother, 'at least not until Christmas Day.'

'I'm not drinking it… just practicing for our next photo shoot.' He looked expectantly at his father.

'Really, James?' his dad sighed. 'That was one time, years ago now. How many times do I have to say that it was a mistake before you let it go?' His dad threw one of the cushions from the sofa at him, but James caught it with one hand before it hit him.

'Nice try, Dad.'

'Anyway,' said his mother. 'Albus. How did you get on in your first term? What spells are they teaching these days?'

'I-'

'Come on Mum, it's the same stuff as always. "Wingardium Leviosa" and all that stuff,' James interjected, throwing the cushion high into the air and catching it again. 'What you really want to know about is Albus accidentally destroying the greenhouses.'

Lily clapped so vigorously that Crookshanks was violently dislodged from her lap and skulked away, causing Ginny to scold her, which she ignored, instead addressing James, 'Yes!'

Albus' cheeks coloured as he looked at his dad, who quickly said,

'That's not too bad. I remember Seamus, one of the boys in my year at Hogwarts, he used to blow something up every other week in first year. And quite a few years after, actually.'

But James maneuvered into a sitting position and continued before Albus could reply. 'So, it was a potions lesson, but they were doing about the plants that are useful in potions, hence the greenhouses. Apparently, Professor Davis told him to cut the bicorn horn they were working on using magic, you know, 'Diffindo', the severing charm, and Al refused. And then Professor Davis got really cross so Al pointed his wand _at the_ _window_ and diffindos it, in the _greenhouses_. And everyone's all cut up with bits of broken glass, and one boy had to spend the night in the _hospital wing_!

'Blimey,' said Harry. 'That doesn't sound like you, Albus. What happened?'

'It was Professor Davis's fault, she made me cast Diffindo even though I didn't want to,' Albus seethed, his voice shaking. 'It can cut people, if you do it wrong, did you know that? So I thought, if I just say the word but I don't point my wand properly… just point it outside and away…' He remembered the absolute terror of the world suddenly literally crashing down around him, of people shrieking and hurt because of him.

'Then it won't work and you won't have to risk it,' Harry finished for him. He sighed. 'Al, you would really find it a whole lot less scary if you just put all your energies into learning how to control your magic instead of letting it control you.'

'And Professor Davis said it was like I was deliberately not trying, and I was lucky my laziness didn't have serious irreversible consequences,' Albus muttered, picking at the threads in his jumper. '_And_ she gave me detentions for it. Just because I couldn't do the spell properly.'

'Because you _wouldn't _do the spell properly,' muttered James.

There was a silence.

'What about outside lessons, Al?' Ginny finally asked.

Albus shrugged.

'Why don't you try out for the Quidditch team, or join charms club, or Uncle Neville's herbology club- what's he calling it these days, Greenhouse Three and One Tenth?' she continued.

Albus shifted uncomfortably and murmured, 'Don't think the greenhouse is a good idea.'

'Yeah, Al, try out for the Quidditch team.' James sniggered. 'I can practice my new d- dives by catching you as you fall.' his slight hesitation before the word 'dives' was barely noticeable, but Albus, who knew of James's proclivity towards alliteration when naming his flying moves, suspected the phrase he had glossed over likely contained the word 'dangerous' or 'daring'- or worse, 'death-defying'.

'You can hardly talk,' said Ginny, 'I still don't know why you haven't tried out for the Quidditch team, James; it's such a waste that you insist on just messing around on your broomstick rather than doing a proper sport. You could be great, you know.'

His dad gave sudden twitch and knocked his wine glass off the end of the sofa where it was balanced.

'Scourgify,' he muttered quickly, picking his glass up and putting it on the side table.

'_Proper sport_,' James dismissed, 'why do something that's been done before? Rules are made to be broken, and that includes the rules of Quidditch.'

'Oh, please join Uncle Neville's greenhouse,' advised Lily to Albus, 'then you could send me back some magical Hogwarts plants.'

'You could just focus on your lessons, Al,' said his father, seeing the look on Albus's face. 'It'll seem a lot less scary once you know you can get the hang of a few spells, you'll see.'

Albus nodded and hoped he was right, but he couldn't imagine ever being complacent enough to do magic when he knew the results of it could never be fully predicted or controlled, no matter what anyone said about confidence or being normal. He knew he couldn't join a club at Hogwarts, couldn't make himself sign up for more opportunities for Lily's beloved magical accidents. He avoided looking at his family, and as the conversation turned to Uncle Neville's club with the ridiculously long name, he let the words float over him. When they were all absorbed in the conversation enough that he felt it was unlikely anyone would tell him off for it, he took his favourite book about the Aurors who had rescued muggle-borns from Azkaban during the war from the bookshelf next to him.

It proved difficult, however, for him to focus on it properly, because he was too on edge from catching snippets of James begging his dad to go and get the devil's snare sample he apparently had in his office. He suspected that his dad was just teasing James, but he thought it better to be on guard. The first thing James would do if he were to come into possession of a devil's snare sample would be to creep up on him from behind with it. He thought it safest to carry on reading inconspicuously, in case James hadn't considered this, until he could sneak off on his own again, and hunt for the key to the pensieve in his parent's room- the one place where he felt safe and alone.

After a while, his Dad came over carrying a small box, and a steaming mug of spiced pumpkin juice, which he handed to Albus.

'_The Muggle-born Liberation of 1998,_' he read from the cover of Albus's book.

Albus made an indistinct noise of acknowledgement, frowning at the book and not looking up at his Dad's expression of concern. But to his relief, he didn't say anything about the violent and shocking subject matter, which detailed the horrific condition that the muggle-borns had been found in, and the tortures they had suffered at the hands of the dementors. Instead, his dad asked,

'Do you like History of Magic at Hogwarts, Al?'

'Yeah,' said Albus, adding, 'but I don't think anyone else likes it much,' as he remembered his classmate Hecate's taunts about how History of Magic was for squibs, when she had come across him examining the unicorn tapestries with his friend Scorpius.

'No.' His Dad smiled. 'I was never much of a fan, to be honest. But it's an important subject. Especially now.'

'Do you mean with what's happening with Azkaban?' Albus asked, looking up at him.

His dad sighed. 'These creatures that they want to guard the prison now instead of us Aurors, it's just unbelievable, Albus. After everything we went through- after everything everyone went through- you'd have thought that people would have learnt the dangers of entrusting Azkaban to creatures that…' he made a face, clearly trying not to get too worked up.

'It's okay, Dad,' said Albus quickly, 'You don't have to explain. I do know they're a bad idea; you've talked about them before. "It's a slippery slope from the mutions back to the dark days of the dementors."'

'I know you do, Al,' Harry said gently. 'It's just a shame that so few people seem to agree, nowadays.' He offered the small box to Albus, saying in an undertone, 'Have the Firewhisky ones before James sees; they make you glide across the floor like it's ice.'

Albus took one of the small chocolates from the box, grinning tentatively. They had bits of glowing orange in them, like the embers of a campfire. His dad shook the box towards Lily, whose elfish face had appeared behind his chair at the mention of chocolates.

Soon Albus and Lily were gliding through the house, the wind whistling through their hair, carrying the chocolate box and being pursued by James, who was yelling after them happily, 'If I had my broom!'

Albus didn't miss the nod of approval between his parents, or fail to notice that his Dad tucked the book away, at the back of the shelf. Despite their conversation, he still wondered if he was going to find his stocking full of Herbology things tomorrow instead of the new drawing set he had asked for. As Lily jostled against him, trying to find her balance as James stalked closer, the wardrobe key inside his cloak pocket struck against his leg painfully, but at least it reassured him that it was safe and hidden. At the last moment he slid towards the stairs to the basement kitchen, ducking under James's grasping hands, and clutching Lily as they wobbled away, Lily laughing, and Albus reaching for the bannister.


	2. Chapter 2

**Dragons after Dinner**

Albus sat alone at his desk as his family got ready for Christmas dinner, turning a worn black diary over in his hands nervously. Any minute now, his mother would call them all down, and he would have to face the unpredictability of a Potter family party. The coloured inks and specialist quills he had received in his stocking that morning were sprawled across his desk, and they gave him a modicum of comfort. He was relieved to have received them; it meant that his dad's concerns that his drawings were dangerously close to the realm of dark magic had been quashed underneath his mother's acceptance of them, and by extension, of Albus himself. But he couldn't allow himself to become complacent. His mother didn't know about the diary, after all.

He knew that his possession of the diary was more incriminating than his drawing of the unicorn being stabbed which was pinned to the wall before him, as bloody and violent as it was. His liking for the drawing was complicated, and partly down to the sympathy he felt for the unicorn. This was normal and good, he thought, even if his empathy made him stare at the thrashing and the spears and the blood for longer than a normal person would. But there was no getting around the fact that he felt nothing but awe for the diary. He thought it was a beautiful object. He had heard the story, of course, of the blood and the snake and the sewers, and he knew he should find it completely repulsive. But all those stains simply added to its used quality, which he found satisfying. It was swollen so fat with water damage that the hole through the middle was large enough for him to store small items, which was useful. The pages were warped and wrinkled, so that there was a soft resistance when you pressed down on the cover, like a cushion.

It was a corpse, though. He leafed through the crusty pages the way he imagined the muggles in his grandfather's stories would turn over the bits inside of the frogs they dissected. This was Tom Riddle's dead body; this was where his soul had lived, where he had dribbled out his instructions onto the pages and where he had sucked in Albus's father and mother.

He sat up straighter. It wasn't actually a corpse, Albus told himself. There were only a handful of objects that had been horcruxes, and he bet that no one else had given it much thought. He got to decide what it was. Perhaps it was no more a corpse than his drawing of the tapestry was. The tapestry might even be more troubling and corpse-like, really, since even though it hadn't ever actually contained the soul of the people and beasts that it depicted, it _was_ actively trying to. It was trying to convey their essence, the physical reality of their bodies. The diary, lying innocently dead in his hands, wasn't trying to do anything.

'How long till Uncle Charlie and everyone gets here?' Albus heard his brother bellow from the bowels of the house.

'Half an hour!' his mother yelled back from even further below, in the basement kitchen, where she was preparing their Christmas dinner. 'And you better be smartening yourself up! Do something about your hair!'

'Like what? Shall I vanish it?'

_Half an hour!_ Albus's heart soared as he raced over to shut his bedroom door. He was still safe for half an hour! He cupped the diary in his palms and knelt down, as though in prayer, before pulling himself underneath the bed, so that it was safe from prying eyes if they happened to peer into his room. In the stab wound left by the basilisk fang, he kept his most incriminating possession of all: the vial of his father's memory. It was a perfect fit, so snug that it took Albus a few seconds to shake it out. He uncorked it before tipping its contents back into the hole reverently. In the sense that the memory was a gas, it was delectable, and in the sense that it was a liquid, it shone like the most refreshing, thirst-quenching cordial he had ever seen. He inhaled, his clawed fingers digging into the carpet. The memory swirled around in the wound, which had caused the death of the horcrux and the destruction of Tom Riddle's memories. However, it had left the charm that made the diary a pensieve largely intact, so it was still capable of housing other memories, like his father's, which was now undulating so tantalizingly before him.

Albus dipped his head towards the memory until the tip of his nose gently caressed it. Blackness descended on him, and the gentle caress turned into a gentle wind, which grew gradually harsher. Through the blackness he could make out his father, aunt and uncle amongst a crowd of others, silhouetted against a huge hole that had been torn in the seventh floor of Hogwarts. Albus stood at the periphery of his father's memory, in the unnoticed detail that without a pensieve would be preserved only in his unconscious. When he had first entered the memory, he had landed closer to his father. It was as though the memory remembered what Albus did there and shaped itself for him accordingly. A gangly teenage boy descended next to Albus in the courtyard, tripping awkwardly from his broom, clutching a golden galleon. The screams and bangs of the battle in the castle were surprisingly distant and echoing, creating an illusion of safety, the idea that they were hidden and alone.

Colin was fumbling in his travelling cloak for his wand, making a bungle of it because he was so reluctant to let go of the DA coin clutched tightly in his sweaty, eager fist. Spiders the size of shoes scuttled past him, and he stamped on them, crushing them and looking around for more. He froze suddenly, and Albus tensed involuntarily, as he always did, but Colin had only spotted Harry. Colin gazed worshipfully up at Harry, a looming outline against the fires of Hogwarts shining in the heavens. Dark shapes flitted across him, and Colin frowned, zeroing in on them with the concentration of one used to peering through a camera lens. Some of them were massive, many legged, and scuttling, but others had the dark shape of bats and were issuing a low buzzing, like that of bees. It was the buzzing of spells, so they weren't dementors. The buzz was ominous, low like the whine of the muggle bombs after which dungbombs were named, Albus thought. It sounded to him like the dark magic of death eaters. Perhaps Colin thought so too, because he tore his eyes away from Harry and resumed groping around for his wand.

But Colin had gazed at Harry for far too long. He noticed the death eater creeping through the shadows seconds before the death eater noticed him, and he was still wandless. Albus stepped into the space where Colin stood, and looked down at Colin's hand clutching the galleon as if it were his own. He saw it burn with the heat from the protean charm already placed upon it, which it gave off whenever it received a new message from the master coin, but which was now flaring into unprecedented levels of intensity by Colin's wandless and wordless magic. It seared white hot as Albus traced the action he knew Colin was doing, throwing it at the death eater, and then ducking down as curses streaked above them both. The galleon glowed brighter than the death eater's curses, brighter even than the lights which illuminated Harry. It struck the death eater, and his robes caught fire, making him drop his wand in agony and roll around on the cobblestones.

'Accio galleon,' Colin muttered urgently as he stumbled backwards into the shadows, managing finally to extract his wand. 'Cheers Hermione,' he breathed to the galleon, before stowing it in his pocket.

'Ooh, you are good!' a voice cooed to them. Albus smiled.

The ghost of a girl was skulking over a pool of blood.

'There's _so_ much destruction in my bathroom,' she went on, her voice rising. 'It's really _most_ disturbing, to watch all the people cursing and flailing, shouting and wailing,' her voice rose slightly towards her own characteristic wail, perhaps in sympathy, 'so I've had to come outside in the cold, all alone.' She pouted. 'And I can't even do anything, to stop all this _horrible_ chaos,' she continued, twirling slightly in the air. 'And I would if I could; it's _so_ sad.' She gave an unconvincing sob.

'But, Myrtle,' said Albus slowly, knowing all of Colin's words by heart. 'You can.'

He recited the rest of Colin's speech to Myrtle as though it were a Shakespearian soliloquy. It came to him effortlessly now, so he was able to focus most of his attention on watching her eyes grow round with awe and excitement behind her circular glasses, glinting with the reflection of the smoldering death eater behind him.

Colin was unaware that he was being haunted by more than Myrtle as he felt his way along the shadowed edge of the courtyard, away from the death eater who was by now surrounded by students. He kept glancing up at Harry as he hurried along. A wave of much larger spiders surged past them towards the castle, too large this time to be stepped on. Colin tried anyway and ended up simply climbing aboard.

'Shortcut, I suppose!' he and Albus yelled to Myrtle, and the three of them rode on the back of the spider towards the gash through the heart of Hogwarts' seventh floor.

Once they were inside the corridor, the deficits of using the diary as a pensieve became much more apparent. The lighting was dim like the courtyard had been, despite the fact that the corridor was lit by flaming torches on the walls, not to mention the incessant flashes of jinxes and curses. The saturation was similarly diminished compared to the brilliance Albus knew to be possible from his trips inside his father's pensieve, so that the scene before him was almost completely in black and white. He supposed it was unreasonable to expect that being stabbed with a basilisk fang would have had no effect at all on the charms that allowed the diary to function as a pensieve.

It was now that Colin mobilized moaning Myrtle. As a death eater came charging around the corner, she swooped into him, and he gasped as though he had been plunged into freezing water. He involuntarily drew his hands to his chest, unable to think of any spell that might work on a ghost with no substance to blast away or life to extinguish.

'_Petrificus Totalus,_' Colin and Albus whispered, like a prayer, and the death eater froze and fell to the dusty ground.

Three more death eaters came looking for their friend and met the same fate. Myrtle swept between them, twirling from one to the next, like the ballet dancing trolls in the tapestry of Barnabas the Barmy behind her- only much, much happier looking. Sometimes Albus liked to twirl up there with her, but most of the time he preferred being Colin's shadow. There was something so satisfying about being able to match Colin's words and gestures precisely, about knowing exactly what was going to happen, and being able to stand where Colin stood and chant the right spell, formulate the right plan. He would do this forever if he could, if there were no real Hogwarts and no family Christmas dinner that he had to attend.

'ROOKWOOD!' yelled a man, whom Albus barely recognized as his Uncle Percy under a layer of dust and blood, as he charged towards them following yet another death eater. Albus, Colin and Myrtle all looked up just in time to see his dad, uncle and aunt: a curiously satisfying mirror image. But it was only for a moment, and then the trio disappeared behind the Unicorn tapestry, the same one that Albus had drawn and pinned to his bedroom wall. He like this, too, because every inch was familiar to him, every line was a line he had traced, and every shadow was a shadow he had shaded. At the same time, Myrtle was swept up by the ghost of a headless horseman, who was charging past. She wailed delightedly from above the horse's bouncing tail as they galloped away.

Then something strange happened to the memory, something that had happened several times before at different points, but never at this moment. Albus expected to have to temporarily recede from his beloved Colin, into the space behind the tapestry where his father was. It was Harry's memory, and the tapestry was between him and Colin now, so Colin wasn't even remotely part of the backdrop. But the memory seemed to shimmer slightly, as if the pages of the diary had been turned, and everything had been jolted, even though Albus knew that it hadn't. For the first time, Albus stayed where he was next to Colin, with Uncle Percy and Rookwood racing towards him, in a scene that he had never been able to experience before.

He watched Colin and Uncle Percy duelling with Rookwood, drinking in Colin's spells. He tried not to look too closely at his Uncle Percy, because it was uncomfortable to see his face distorted by obvious grief. Albus would have to see him soon, at Christmas dinner. He wondered, not for the first time, whether he ought not to try harder to resist his temptation to spend so much time in his father's memory of the battle. But the prospect of more of the battle opening up to him excited him too much for him to really believe himself whenever he made such a resolve. He didn't know why the memory was doing this; he had never heard of such a thing before. He supposed it was another symptom of the damage his father had inflicted upon the diary, like the low lighting and saturation.

But it felt as though the memory were rewarding him for his efforts to learn it, for his oneness with it. Perhaps the memory might even let him memorize and enact every detail of the battle in its entirety. He would be like a god, then; the god of war. He smiled as Rookwood succumbed to Colin's 'stupefy!', which he managed to sneak in as Rookwood angled his protego towards Percy, underestimating Colin and suffering accordingly. As Colin said the spell, he twisted his wand exactly, pointing at the narrow gap in Rookwood's defenses. That would be fun, Albus thought. The precision of that twist would be beautiful to be in sync with, when he had learnt it.

It would be a thousand times better in the real pensieve, he knew. The memory inside the diary was only a pale imitation of the technicolour splendor it would possess within his father's pensieve.

'Albus!' his mother called from outside the memory.

He wrenched himself away immediately, out of the diary's soothing embrace, and the battle was abruptly gone from him. He remained crouched under his bed until his mother retreated from his doorway into James's room opposite. Albus decanted the memory carefully back into the vial and restored it to the diary, which he hid in a mustard yellow sock in his trunk.

He had no choice but to follow his mother and brother down into the basement kitchen and take his place at the table for Christmas dinner. He tried his best to look as though he wasn't wishing that he were elsewhere, still in the memory. Lily and James, by contrast, were both obviously excited, practically throwing themselves on each new arrival in the fireplace.

'Uncle Charlie! Uncle Charlie!' they cried gleefully.

Uncle Charlie, the dragon tamer, awkwardly patted them on their heads as the green sparks dwindled around them. He'd never been very good with children, but that didn't stop James, who couldn't have been more enthralled by him if he were an actual dragon.

'Children, at least let Charlie get onto the rug before accosting him. Come and help me with the goblets,' called their mother, reaching up on tip toe to kiss Uncle Charlie on the cheek, before shepherding James and Lily to the drinks stand. Albus half rose from his chair at the table, unsure if he was included in this, but thought better of it when he saw James and Lily start jostling over who got to take Uncle Charlie's goblet to him. He sank back down, hoping no one had noticed.

Uncle Charlie took the seat on the other side of Albus's dad, whom Albus was sitting next to. His seat was directly in front of the floral Lunaria centre piece, its silvery seed pods reaching up to the bottom of the bewitched ceiling, which was gently snowing. Uncle Ron, who was very tall, kept forgetting it was there despite having cast it, so that he would accidentally stand up and have to shake the snow out of his red hair.

'Charlie,' called Harry, over the raucous of various cousins, aunts, and uncles seated around the long table. 'What happened to your face?'

Uncle Charlie had so many dragon-related facial blemishes, that it took Albus a while to spot the newest one to which his dad was referring. It was a large bruise which shadowed his jaw.

'Oh, this? Hungarian Horntail, I think.' said Uncle Charlie lightly. His dad winced in sympathy. 'But you'd know all about that, of course.' They grinned at each other. 'This one had gone a bit mad. Danger to its own young, so me and the team had to go in and separate them. Don't suppose you happen to have the pensieve from the auror department here? Ginny mentioned you sometimes borrow one to analyze raids on Dark Wizards, to identify them or look for details you missed? Do you mind if I use it to show the dragons to James later? I've a feeling he'd want to see.'

Albus gripped the edge of the table and opened his mouth to speak.

'Not at all,' said his dad, 'On the contrary, dragon taming would be a much safer career choice than his bloody flying stunts, so show him all you like.'

'Can I see, too?' Albus managed to interject.

'Er…. Sure!' said Uncle Charlie, glancing at Harry, 'I didn't think you were particularly into dragons, Albus.'

Albus feigned nonchalance. 'I- well, I just thought it might be interesting.' He shrugged. 'And if you're showing James anyway…'

'I'll take the cup! No, I'll take the cup!' came his siblings whining voices from across the room.

'For heaven's sake, why don't you just take it to Charlie together?' came his mother's exasperated voice.

Albus suddenly became hyper aware of his dad, who had become oddly still next to him, frozen with his hand outstretched to his goblet of mulled mead.

'No!' his dad suddenly yelled out loud. Everyone at the table went quiet. Oblivious, his dad stood up with such force that he knocked the vase of Lunaria over. Crookshanks gave a started mewl from the stairs. 'Cedric! No!' he continued to yell, until Uncle Charlie's hand on his arm made him come to. He blinked confusedly, and Albus saw tears prick in his eyes. Albus looked down, embarrassed and afraid.

'Sorry, sorry,' Harry said, 'just going to get some air.' And he strode up the stairs past Crookshanks with Uncle Charlie following him, leaving the rest of the family sympathetically subdued.

Albus always tried to forget that his dad sometimes had these funny turns, but when they did happen, they made him anxious for days afterwards. What if that happened at platform 9 and 3 quarters when his dad took him back after Christmas? Albus had thought it was bad enough when people ran up to them in public, clamoring for his father's autograph. He imagined how he would feel if instead of everyone's excited gossiping whenever they set eyes on his father, there was just silence, like now. He didn't think he could cope with that. Lily started to cry.

'What's wrong with Daddy?' she whispered to their mum.

'Shh, Lily, it's alright. Daddy's just gone… gone outside for a moment.' She replied, evidently troubled.

Uncle Ron bounded to his feet, sweeping Lily up onto his shoulders, so that the enchanted snow fell all around her, and her face lit up as he spun around. James reached over and stole his dad's sausages, and their mother repaired the Lunaria. Normality resumed.

Albus quietly snuck up the stairs until he was almost at the top, where he lay down flat and observed his dad and Uncle Charlie.

'…put the memory of Cedric and the graveyard in the pensieve?' Uncle Charlie was murmuring to Harry. 'Take the emotional edge off, you know, get a bit of distance?'

'I don't think that would be wise,' replied Harry, who was rubbing the scar on his forehead absently, with his eyes shut. 'We never found out what happened to the memory of the battle I left there last winter.'

'Didn't you?' said Uncle Charlie. 'What, the one you sent to the portrait commissioner?'

'Yeah,' Harry answered darkly. 'I volunteered because I remembered Colin- Colin Creevey, he was a young boy who always carried around a camera with him- I remembered seeing him fighting in the Battle of Hogwarts. It was only a fleeting glance, but then I checked the memory in the pensieve, and he was there for quite a long time, in the background, trying to get to me. To help me.' He rubbed his scar so hard it looked like it hurt. 'They wanted everyone's memories of them, the fallen fifty, as they were fighting, for that commemorative portrait. For the artists to work from. I thought it was a great idea. A way to honour them.'

'No ideas what happened to it?'

Harry took a deep, slow breath. 'None. It was locked, at the time. I should have just put it back in my mind as soon as he sent it back, I know. But I couldn't face it. The emotions of them are always more raw initially. Like reliving it. I thought I would do it later. But then, later, it was gone.'

'Do you think James took it, as a joke?'

'We did ask, just in case. If he'd taken it as some sort of joke or just… I don't know, curiosity? But he said he didn't. We keep the key hidden, now, though. Just me and Ginny know. That reminds me, actually, I'll go and get it for you, it's in the office…'

They moved off, and Albus crept back down into the kitchen, his heart racing. If he could manage to get rid of his brother and Uncle Charlie after seeing the dragons, then he would have the real, unlocked pensieve to himself. He could hardly wait. He resumed his place at the table, started by James falling off his chair. He had tried to show their god-brother Teddy how he could do a forward roll starting on one hand.

His dad and Uncle Charlie returned innocuously after a short while, discussing quidditch between cross-bred acromantula-pixies.

'Do you think it will take off, Harry? As an idea?'

'Well, it's certainly got legs.'

'I call it free flying,' said James earnestly to Teddy across the table, 'It's easier on a broom somehow, the chair gets in the way.'

Next to them, Rose was gabbling, 'Daddy, daddy, Lily has an idea to make lots of different weathers that we can fly through, not just snow.'

Suddenly Albus felt a burning sensation on his tongue and he had to spit out his potatoes into his napkin. Uncle Percy stared at him as he started coughing, but he felt a hand on his shoulder and turned to see his mum, who put her hand on his chin and told him to open his mouth.

She sighed and then muttered a spell. 'Concentrated acid pop essence,' she told him, as the holes burnt into his tongue healed. He took a sip of pumpkin juice. She glanced at James, who was still talking animatedly to Teddy. 'I'll talk to him later,' she said. 'Just leave the potatoes on your plate for now.'

'Everyone finished?' Harry called. Albus braced himself. He recognized that look in his father. 'Time to add a little extravagance to the proceedings?' He looked mischievously at James as he pointed towards the gently snowing ceiling and commanded, 'Nix Maximus!'

The snow suddenly turned into a blizzard, overcoming the invisible shield and descending into the room so that the floor was soon coated in a good few inches. James scooped some up into a sizable snowball.

'Hey, James!' screeched Lily, his chosen victim. But she was smiling as she threw one back.

Albus ducked unnoticed under the table. Even the adults were overcome with the sudden urge to throw snow at each other.

He watched the snow mount up on the other side of the thick tablecloth, glad to be out of the firing line. It got darker very quickly, until the snow had completely submerged the table and it became pitch black. The sounds of his family's snowball fight were muffled. It occurred to him that he should have left before he became trapped, as he huddled in the darkness.

He waited for what seemed like ages. Surely his Dad would vanish the snow soon? He was starting to feel panicked. Wouldn't he suffocate eventually? His wand was in his pocket, and he picked it out. Lifting the tablecloth, he jabbed it into the wall of snow again and again, but it was not an effective shovel, and he couldn't see what he was doing. Then he stopped short, because an ominous red was glowing at the tip of his wand. Like his panic, it was becoming more insistent by the second. He fought the urge to drop it, remembering his Dad saying in the drawing room that he would find it easier if he tried to control his magic, rather than evade it entirely. The glow flared into an undulating flame, as though his wand were a long match. The flame was licking disturbingly close to his hand, forcing him to hold the wand in an awkward, diagonal way. He touched the flame desperately to the wall of snow. Nothing happened, except that it scorched his skin when he took his attention away from it to see whether the snow was melting. He dropped it without thinking, and it caught on the carpet: a little campfire with only one stick. Albus turned to the wall of snow and slammed both his hands flat against it. It wasn't cold. He gazed at it, uncomprehending. His fire was very hot.

'Dad!' he yelled. 'Dad!'

But his dad couldn't hear him. What an idiotic way to die; James would be laughing at him even at his funeral. He took off his cloak and threw it over his wand, pressing it down to stifle the magical flames, but the fire had spread beyond it now. Albus began to cough. He fumbled for the wand under his cloak and jabbed it into the snow again, but there was no hope. It really was most unlike a shovel.

Suddenly, his eyes itching, the space filled with light; the deceptive snow had vanished. Albus let out a cry of relief and tumbled out from under the table. He threw his wand away from him. It landed in the lunaria, which promptly burst into flames, to the shock of Uncle Ron, Aunt Hermione, and Lily, who were the only ones left in the room. It was immediately extinguished by his Aunt Hermione, along with the small fire under the table. Lily reached into the vase from where she was perched on Uncle Ron's shoulders again and handed his wand to him. He took it with great reluctance.

'What were you doing under the table, Al? You missed our ambush on James!' she said.

'Little goblin had it coming to him, if you ask me,' said Uncle Ron.

'How's your mouth?' Aunt Hermione asked gently.

'Fine,' he mumbled, embarrassed.

'Got yourself into a tight corner, snowed under the table there,' Uncle Ron said jovially. 'I didn't know you could cast 'incendio'. Pretty advanced!'

Albus looked at the floor and muttered something incomprehensible.

'Enchanted snow is warm and dry, so you can't melt it with "incendio",' Aunt Hermione explained, as knowledgeable as ever. 'It doesn't burn, either. A vanishing charm would have been your best bet. But I don't suppose you've reached that yet at Hogwarts?'

He shook his head.

'No,' she looked at him thoughtfully. 'And it would have been a difficult spell, regardless, because of the large quantity.'

'Did you try yelling?' offered Uncle Ron.

Albus nodded, fighting back tears.

'Sonorous might be worth learning.' Uncle Ron looked at his wife. 'Bit easier, maybe.'

'Well anyway, I doubt it will happen again,' Aunt Hermione said kindly.

'No,' choked Albus. 'It's always something new.' He raced up the stairs away from them and locked himself in the downstairs toilet. He could hear them all in the drawing room, examining something. He only came out when he heard them descend the stairs again for pudding.

As the night wore on, growing gradually louder with chatter and the sound of James crashing to the floor several more times, Albus managed to extract both himself and a second helping of trifle from the enfolding gaggle of cloaks and wine glasses. People were dispersed throughout the house now, and he hovered awkwardly in the entrance hall by Lily, who was teasing Crookshanks with strips of turkey and secretively conferring with Teddy and Cousin Hugo. Uncle Charlie was just visible by the fire in the drawing room.

'Albus,' whispered Lily, stepping closer to him, 'Teddy says we can enchant a flying obstacle course on the stairs using weather charms.'

'That's great, Lily,' Albus muttered, not really listening, keeping his eye on Uncle Charlie.

'We can do it here, at the top of Aunty Fleur's sculpture,' she continued, and began to climb a magnificent snow sculpture of a grand palace, with balconies that were convenient for footholds. Albus, still shaken from the feeling of being trapped beneath the enchanted snow with no way out, glared at it as she climbed, unnaturally glistening as it was in the candlelight from the chandelier. Suddenly he became aware of the intensity of his emotions, but before he could turn away, he saw the top part of the sculpture, where Lily had ascended to, vanish. Lily screamed and fell, hard, onto the hall floor.

Their mother came running. 'You're alright, Lily. You're alright!'

Lily hesitated and then started crying. Albus turned away, trying not to look at them, just in case. The motionless house-elf portraits lining the stairs regarded him with naïve sympathy. Staring at the floor, he tried desperately not to feel what he knew had made the sculpture disappear- the insistent drumming of his unconscious magic. He put his hand to his forehead, as his father had done earlier, and screwed up his eyes. He hadn't done unconscious magic without pointing his wand for ages. It was meant to have stopped. What was wrong with him?

'Albus,' Uncle Charlie emerged from the drawing room with James. 'I can see you're busy, mate. James and I are off to see the dragons now, but-'

'I'm not busy.' Albus turned his back on the whimpering Lily. He knew Uncle Charlie didn't really want to take him. Uncle Charlie knew that he didn't like dragons. But the lie and the pensieve were his only relief from this. He followed them both to a side table in the corner of the drawing room, where the pensieve was set up. He had to suppress a sob of joy at the sight of it.

'You don't have to prove anything,' said his Dad, approaching him before he could follow James into the pensieve. 'I'm sure Lily would love you to stay and play with her. Are you sure you want to go in, Al?'

He brushed off the question with a nod. The surface of the pensieve shone with a harsh, white light, which was no less blinding when he found himself staring up at a dragon silhouetted against it. The barren terrain was nothing like the familiar memory Albus was used to entering. The dragons were shockingly huge and bright in the Romanian sun. He had to stop himself crying out to James when he stood directly in the path of the fire blazing from their mouths, laughing at the thrill of the phantom flames engulfing him. Albus dug his fingernails into the back of his thumbs and drew closer to Uncle Charlie, hoping that he would know the safest place to stand, and wouldn't seek out the paths of fire as James was. Luckily, he seemed too distracted by laughing at James and shouting explanations to him over the roars to mess about himself, too busy explaining what he and his friends were doing in the memory to retrieve the baby dragons from their mother.

The baby dragons were clinging to their mother's back as she rose higher and higher to escape the wizards. Albus could not see how these tiny men, buzzing flies in comparison to such a beast, were going to catch her. This futility seemed to strike the men in the memory, as they ceased their ascent and hovered instead in her enormous shadow. Albus strained to hear what Uncle Charlie was saying over the roars.

'You'll like this!' Uncle Charlie yelled, and Albus was glad for this split second of forewarning when the dragon suddenly turned its wingspan on its side and fell fifty feet through the air towards them. The forewarning didn't stop his terror, but it might have prevented him dropping into a dead faint. He had never seen anyone fly as quickly as the men did in that moment, not even James. They had clearly been anticipating the dragon's attempt to crush them to death, and about half of them were each able to rip a clinging baby dragon away, without so much as a spell being fired.

Albus covered his ears as the dragon roared so loudly that he felt it go through him. Then, he felt Uncle Charlie's hand on his shoulder, and he emerged from the pensieve into the now empty drawing room with relief.

'That was awesome, Uncle Charlie! What _was_ that spin thing it did? And the fire!' cried James, set alight indeed with the fervor of a boy obsessed.

'It's called "whiffling". The dragon rolls over so that it's wings momentarily stop supporting it, falls, and then rights itself again.'

James looked awed, and Albus eyed him suspiciously.

'I'm off to find my broom,' James announced suddenly. 'Thanks Uncle Charlie!' And he charged from the room.

'I'll put it away, if you like,' Albus said, stretching out his slightly shaky hand for the keys.

'Are you sure you're allowed on your broom? It's quite late,' Uncle Charlie yelled after James, and he absently handed Albus the key before chasing after him.

Finally, finally, Albus closed his fingers around the key. He picked up the pensieve dish and raced after Uncle Charlie, hoping he looked as though he was merely carrying the pensieve for him in the still crowded hall. His parents were luckily no where in sight, and he made it up the first flight of stairs unchallenged. Turning the heavy key over in his hand, smiling despite his lingering anxiety from the dragons, he leapt up the stairs to his and James's floor. He shut the door of his drafty bedroom, empty but for the thing in his wardrobe. Crouched down, he placed the pensieve on his bed and opened Tom Riddle's diary, running his fingernails over the glass vial there, making a delicate chinking sound. It was a blessed relief compared to the chatter of the hall and the roar of the dragon.

Albus suddenly flung his jumper over his head, convinced that he could smell the smoke from the dragons on it, and unlocked the door to his wardrobe to get a different one. He reached in carefully, making sure that the creature was safely at the back, and then went to lock it again. As he did so, he noticed how beautiful his room looked bathed in flashes of light from the pensieve, glinting off of the mirror set into the wardrobe door and off the glass ink pots lined up on his desk. It flashed so brightly off the gold metal frame of the Phineas Nigellus Black's portrait, which was hanging on the wall opposite him, that he squinted, dazzled. He lifted up the pensieve and pushed it underneath his bed. Scooping up the dragon memory into an empty vial, he shuddered, and picked up the vial of his father's memory.

But then he stopped. The wand in his pocket was jabbing into his leg uncomfortably. The last time he had managed to sneak away his father's pensieve, he had not owned a wand. He extracted it from his pocket with difficulty and examined it in the faint blue light of his father's memory, and he bit his lip. He could, theoretically, extract a memory himself now. He should want to. He searched for memories of his own that he might use, but there were none, none involving magic that he could bare to revisit- unless he were to pretend to be James, and that thought repulsed him. Repulsion quickly sunk into the swamp of shame that began to clog up his insides at the thought of his own deficiency. And it was as though his fledgling decision to do it himself was dragged down with it, swallowed up. He had to escape the suffocation and the way out glinted at him from within the vial. Ignoring James, who was clattering about in his room across the hall, he dove headfirst inside the pensieve.

His first breath back in the memory courtyard was like breathing in the warm summer evening air on a holiday. Everything was sharpened, heightened, and pure in a way that it wasn't within the tattered old diary. He wondered how he had deprived himself of this, and why. He would have to steal the pensieve and take it away with him to Hogwarts, despite the likelihood of people investigating the disappearance of such a valuable object, which belonged to the Aurors office at the ministry. He felt lighter, he felt as though both himself and the air around him was charged with wondrous possibilities; he felt safe. It was as though he hadn't realised he had been half holding his breath all his life, and only now was he experiencing life the way he was meant to: naturally, truthfully.

Albus moved quickly, decisively. It was a dance he knew well. When he reached the new section, with his Uncle Percy, he stepped over the phantom of Colin and performed the actions he had memorized earlier. They were all slightly off, but he would get there with practice. His imitation of the twist of Colin's wrist as he shot his spell through Rookwood's protego charm, however, was perfect. After the twist, he looked up. This time, it was by coincidence that it was at the same time as Colin, rather than by memory. He marveled at Uncle Percy's expression. It was a look familiar to him only by virtue of this memory- a look of shocked respect, of wanting to continue to cast spells but being temporarily unable to, because of the brilliance of the boy in front of him.

Eventually, exhausted, Albus emerged from the memory to his silent bedroom. He was thrown back into a kneeling position on the floor next to his bed. A small creak made him jump up, clutching the diary that had lain beside him. He turned.


End file.
